Afterward some men on our gallery played on bagpipes. From the courtyard came the twanging of simple stringed instruments, and nasal voices lifted in interminable melancholy songs. A woman who was no better than she should have been danced in the light of two flaring kerosene torches by the gate until she won the attention of a bandy-legged Turcoman rug-merchant. A thief attempted to pick the purse of a fat Persian. A Kurdish horse-dealer tried to knife a snarling Greek. And gradually the khan's inmates sought their sleep. Most of them lay in the courtyard or stables beside their animals and goods or else on the galleries. The snores of a score resounded into our cubicle. Yet I slept, awakening at intervals of the night when a child cried for the breast or a camel broke loose and threshed around the courtyard or a party of belated travelers stumbled over the sleepers outside our door.
We were astir early in the morning, and before eight o'clock Wasso Mikali, Nikka and I left the khan—Wasso having given strict injunction to his young men to stick to their quarters and discourage any endeavors to make them talk—to cross the Golden Horn to the European quarter of Pera. This walk was no less fascinating than our ride from the Adrianople Gate. It took us through the northeastern half of Stamboul, and after we had passed the lower bridge of boats, into the comparatively civilized conditions of the Galata and Pera areas.
But to tell the truth, once we had left Stamboul Nikka and I thought little of our surroundings. Nikka even relinquished some of the wolfish manner which his return to Gypsy life had inspired, and we discussed eagerly, and not for the first time, the possibility that harm had come to Hugh. But our fears were relieved when we came to the corner of the street opposite the hotel, for there by the entrance stood Hugh and Watkins chatting with Vernon King.
Nikka led the three of us up to the hotel, shambling ungracefully and goggling at the Western aspect of the building and the people who passed on the sidewalk.
"Anybody covering them?" he whispered.
I looked around. On the farther curbstone, smoking and pretending to be interested in the passers-by, lounged two individuals who might have been cut from the same pattern as ourselves; and I indicated them to Nikka as I offered him tobacco from the box I carried Balkan-fashion in my waist-sash.
"All right," he said, "we must be careful. We'll move up beside Hugh, and when there's nobody in earshot you say what you have to say, speaking to me."
We peered open-mouthed into the lobby, gaped at shop-windows and slowly worked to a position close by Hugh and Vernon King. I was amused to observe that Watkins confined his attention to the two spies across the street, whom he favored with a steady, malignant gaze. King, too, was immersed in the conversation. Hugh gave us one keen glance, obviously because we were Gypsies. But he did not recognize us, and indeed, in our gaudy clothes, dirty and unshaven, we looked nothing like his memory of us.
"If they don't come in the next few—" King was saying as we halted close by, staring at a Levantine lady in a Parisian frock who was entering a taxi.
"Better not," warned Hugh, with a wink toward us.